Daddy Dearest
by PJ XD
Summary: In recognition of father's day - a collection of one-shots from the next-gen characters as they reflect on their relationships with their respective fathers. Post DH, Next-Gen. Canon compliant.
1. Scars

_**The idea for this story hit me when I was thinking about Father's day, and I decided to write some short pieces that explore the father-child relationship between each of the next generation characters and their dads. It's true that nobody sees a person in quite the same way as their children do, and I liked the idea of the war heroes being viewed just as people in a Post DH world. **_

_**These won't come in age order, but all of the next gen will get their say. **_

_**As always, I own not a Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Bean of this world. **_

_**Hope you enjoy it!**_

* * *

_Victoire_

When Victoire was about six years old, she began to notice that going out in public with her father made people stare. It wasn't the regular kind of staring, either. Not like she was used to. There were no compliments and _aww_s. There was never a clamour to get autographs. There would just be some whispers and double-takes. Nervous glances were exchanged. Children would cringe into their parents' legs as they passed.

It took her a long time to realise why. People looked at Vicky because she was beautiful, like her mother. But people stared at her daddy because of his scars.

She tried to ignore it. She tried to do what her daddy did, and just walk tall with her head held high like she didn't care what anyone else thought. But Vicky wasn't like that. She _did_ care. After a while, it became too much. She stopped going on trips to Diagon Alley with him. She declined his invitations for her to come exploring the caves on the beach by their house with him and her sister, just in case a muggle would see his face and have that same, horrible reaction.

The less time she spent with him, the guiltier she felt, but she never let it show. One day, when she was nine, she overheard her mother talking to her father in the living room, long after she was supposed to be in bed.

"Eet is just a phase, Bill. You know 'ow leetle girls can be sometimes."

She inched closer to the half-open door, thinking that the conversation must've been about something her sister had done. That was the norm. Dominique was a one-girl wrecking ball, and she'd always done something she wasn't supposed to. _She_ was the daughter that gave their parents sleepless nights and reason for muted conversation. That's why Victoire was so surprised when she heard her name.

"I just don't know what I've done. Or how I can fix it. I feel like Vicky doesn't want to be seen with me." Her daddy's voice didn't sound angry. It wasn't even annoyed. He just sounded tired, and sad. Somehow, that was worse.

"Zat is ridiculous! You are her fazzer – she loves you. Why would you theenk that?"

"I don't know, Fleur. That's why I'm asking."

Her mother, the most beautiful woman that Victoire knew, had leaned over and kissed her father's ruined cheek without so much as a shudder. She then kissed each one of the raised scars that cleaved his face, and when she pulled back, the way she looked at him made it clear that she didn't even notice the marks on his face. They weren't important to her.

The whole display of unconditional love had made Victoire feel wretched with shame.

Vicky hated making her father sad. She hated the fact that she was so shallow. But she couldn't help it, no matter how hard she tried. Sometimes, she envied Dominique for the time she spent with their dad – the way she'd come back gibbering with excitement as she regaled them all with tales of their latest adventure over dinner. Vicky would sit quietly through this, staring at her plate without eating and wishing that she didn't care so much about appearances.

At home, she was still the same loving daughter she always had been, but she couldn't deny that even she felt a fleeting shudder of revulsion if she stared at her daddy's torn face for too long.

One day, just before she started Hogwarts, her father persuaded her to go with him to get her school supplies. She'd tried to wheedle her mother into going instead, but Fleur had her hands full at home with little Louis – he'd recently contracted Kneasle flu. So it was with a resigned and heavy heart that Vicky set off with her father for Diagon Alley.

It was as bad as she'd feared. On the way, they took the muggle Underground. A baby cried when he caught sight of her father's face, and a woman who stood in front of them at the ticket barrier gasped when she caught a glimpse of him in her peripheral vision. Victoire's cheeks were scarlet with embarrassment for the entire journey.

She wasn't a bad person, not really. She'd often wished that there would be some kind of magical cure for her father, something to make his face heal up as good as new, so that she didn't have to be embarrassed about being seen with him. He would be handsome, she thought, without those raised, twisted ridges that ripped across his flesh like knife marks in a canvas.

The minute they'd stepped inside the Leaky Cauldron, her dad had been waylaid by someone, a ministry official no doubt, waving him over to chat about something. He'd bent down to give Vicky a kiss on the nose, and told her that he'd be right back, before heading over to join the conversation. Vicky stood in the middle of the floor, her gaze bouncing from one face to the next with benign interest.

Then a voice behind her said, "You've grown up, Vicky. Hogwarts shopping already?"

She whipped around, squealing in delight. The man that stood behind her held out his arms for a hug, and she hurtled into them without hesitation. Neville Longbottom squeezed her tightly before setting her back on her feet and giving her hair an affectionate ruffle.

"Daddy's taking me to get my supplies," she told him.

"Yeah, he's been looking forward to this day ever since you were born," Neville said with a grin.

Victoire felt a twinge of guilt in her chest as she thought of how she'd tried to persuade her mother to take her instead. "He has?"

"Yeah. He wouldn't stop talking about his baby girl heading off to Hogwarts at last when I saw him last week. Made me promise to keep my eye on you." Neville shot her a conspiratorial wink. He was the Herbology professor at Hogwarts, and possibly the most popular teacher since Dumbledore himself, or so they said. "Are you excited?"

"I can't wait," Vicky answered truthfully.

Just then, a woman seated at the bar interrupted their conversation. She leaned forward on her stool, bright eyes fixed on Victoire's small face. "Is this her, Neville?"

"This is our Vicky," he agreed, clapping one hand onto Victoire's skinny shoulder.

"You're very like your mother," she murmured, her eyes roaming over the girl's face. "Except that red in your hair is your dad's genes, I'll bet."

Victoire nodded. Her hair wasn't a true red, but a light strawberry gold. People always gushed about how pretty it looked in the sunlight. The woman glanced over to where Vicky's dad stood, chatting animatedly with the small group of wizards in green and purple travelling cloaks. To Victoire's surprise, she didn't grimace at the sight of his face. Instead, the woman smiled, brushing a lock of her brown hair away from her eyes as she studied him.

She turned back to Vicky. "Amazing man, your daddy is."

"Why?" Victoire was curious. If this woman could look at her father without cringing, maybe she could let Victoire in on the secret. Maybe then, she could be like her mother, and gaze up into her father's face as though the scars didn't exist.

Neville, who had been watching the exchange quietly, bent down to whisper in Vicky's ear. "This is Lavender Brown, Victoire." He examined her face as he spoke, looking for a flicker of recognition, but when he found none, he didn't elaborate.

Lavender spoke again. "Did you ever hear about the werewolf called Fenrir Greyback?"

This was a name that Vicky recognised. She nodded emphatically. "Yes, I know about him. He was a Death Eater. He's the one who bit Teddy's father."

Lavender nodded. "Your dad was the wizard that defeated him once and for all, during the battle of Hogwarts. He saved a lot of lives. I'd been attacked by Greyback that night."

Victoire felt a sense of amazement and pride settle over her, as she always did when people spoke about her parents' role in the Second Wizarding War. "I didn't know that."

"Justice was served by the right man, in the end," Lavender said fervently. "It's just a pity he couldn't manage to undo what had been done to poor Remus Lupin, and himself."

"What do you mean?" Victoire perked up. She'd never heard anything about Greyback and her father before.

Lavender's eyes widened. "His scars, of course. Greyback ruined your poor father's face a year before he killed him. Didn't you know that, either?"

Victoire shook her head. Greyback, the werewolf, was the one who had hurt her daddy? "But dad isn't a werewolf."

"No," Lavender agreed. "And neither am I." She raised one arm, pushing her sleeve back so that Vicky caught a glimpse of the long, vicious scar that ran from her wrist to her elbow, disappearing up into the folds of her robes. "He wasn't transformed when he attacked us, you see."

"Your dad saved my life, the night Greyback attacked him," Neville interjected quietly, and Victoire gaped at him in astonishment. "Greyback had been aiming for me, but your dad threw himself in the way instead."

Victoire's head was reeling. People had told her that her father was a hero before, but she'd never truly understood what that meant. Not until she was standing there with people, real people, who owed him their lives. Her dad was _brave_.

"It's such a shame," Lavender sighed, turning back to her drink. "About his face, I mean. He used to be so handsome."

Victoire looked back at her father, _really_ looked at him. It was suddenly as though a mask had been lifted from his face, and she could see underneath. The light reflected off the twisted ridges of scar tissue that scored his cheeks and nose and forehead, but she didn't pay that any attention. She could see the man underneath, beautiful and vital and heroic.

For the first time ever, Vicky didn't see the scars, and her dad's face was the handsomest one she'd ever laid eyes on.

Then she said the last words she expected to hear coming out of her mouth, and was surprised to discover that she meant every word. "What are you talking about? He still is."

* * *

_**A/N - This Victoire shows a shallow side that I wanted to explore. It seemed only natural to me that a child who had grown up being told how beautiful she was by everyone she met would end up with a bit of a fixation on appearances, and I thought that her dad would be a perfect way for her to discover how to look beyond the superficial. **_

_**James next. **_

_**PJ **_

_**x**_


	2. A Feather

_James _

Being Harry Potter's son was a source of constant stress for Albus, but not James. No, James loved the fact that people would gawp at him as he passed in the street, and later in the corridors of Hogwarts.

It wasn't that James was an attention-seeker. He liked his mischief, and he couldn't deny that the way the girls swooned at him whenever he shot them a wink was appealing, but he didn't crave the spotlight. He just always happened to be thrust into it.

"Your grandfather would be proud of you!" People always declared, whenever he and Fred pulled off a successful prank, or he scored in a Quidditch game. It made him feel elated, like he was somehow living up to the legacy. When people compared him to his grandfather and namesake, it was incredible. But when people compared him to his dad, it was even better. His classmates would look at him in wonder, and mutter behind their hands about how amazing James Potter actually was.

For most of them, his father was a constant source of nervous excitement. The Boy Who Lived. The Chosen One. The Saviour. The man who defeated the greatest dark wizard of all time. He was more of a myth than an actual person, to those people. In some ways, James held him in the same regard.

The hero-worship of the masses was matched in earnest by James's starry-eyed idolization of his dad.

He'd always remember the day when he discovered that his father was a man just like any other.

James had been seventeen, and home for the summer. Kreacher had turfed him out of his room unceremoniously, with a gruff 'Kreacher needs to clean. Master James will kindly get lost.' He'd gotten up with a grumble, knowing there was nothing to entertain him in the house today.

Al was studying – for what, James didn't have a clue, considering he'd just _finished_ his OWLs – and Lily was off… well, doing whatever it was that Lily did whenever she had a spare moment. James had long since stopped trying to figure out the enigma that was his baby sister. It was best to leave her to it.

He'd paced the garden restlessly – his mother had put a caterwauling charm on the broom shed to prevent him from taking his Firebolt out for a spin. Even though he was technically of age, she'd maintained that he could still be punished as long as he lived under her roof, and his deliberate attempt to frighten his muggle cousins last week was reason enough to keep his broom under lock and key, in her eyes.

James didn't see what the big deal had been – so he fed them all canary creams with their cups of tea? – But Ginny Potter was not a woman to trifle with, so he'd accepted the punishment with minimal complaint. Still, he was itching to take to the skies, or just find something, _anything_ to stop him feeling so cooped up. James didn't handle boredom well.

It was when he let himself back into the kitchen that James caught sight of his father, slumped over the old oak table with his head in his hands. He recognised the defeated posture – he'd been the cause of it many times before – but there was something about the way his shoulders were shaking that made James pause. It looked as though he was _crying_.

"Dad?" he murmured, crossing the kitchen in four strides and hovering by his father's left side.

His father's head lifted, and those famous green eyes met his own brown ones. James was startled to see that they were wet. In all his life, he'd never seen his dad cry before. He was _Harry Potter_. Unshakable. Immovable.

"Dad, is everything okay?"

His father scrubbed one arm across his eyes, brushing away the tears. He attempted a smile in James' direction, but it was a feeble one. "I'm okay, James."

"No, you're not." James reached over and pulled out the chair next to him, before dropping into it. He leaned forwards with his forearms resting on the polished wood, staring intently at his father's face. He'd aged remarkably well, but James thought that the lines across his forehead looked somehow deeper than they had the day before. "What's wrong?"

Instead of replying, his father just shifted slightly in his chair. A flash of white drew James' gaze down to his dad's hand. There was a feather pressed between his fingers – a white owl feather.

"Where did you get that?" he asked, nodding at the object. "None of us have a snowy owl."

"I found it in Sirius's old room," his father responded quietly. "It was under the desk."

"Kreacher must've missed it when he was cleaning," James said with a shrug. "Why are you upset?"

His dad gave him a small smile. "It just brought back old memories, that's all."

"The feather?"

"Yeah. You know, I got my first owl for my eleventh birthday."

James felt like there was something he was missing, but he went along with his father's conversation all the same. There was something about seeing him cry that had deeply unnerved him.

"Oh."

"Hagrid gave her to me as a present. I'd just found out I was a wizard, and he went and bought her for me. He told me that every kid should have an owl."

"Unless you're Lily," James put in, with a smile. He was relieved to see his father grin at this.

"Unless you're Lily," he agreed. James's sister had refused point-blank to buy an owl when their parents had offered. She maintained that it was cruel, keeping a hunting bird like that locked up in a cage and sending them to deliver messages. James remembered Uncle Ron overhearing one of her outbursts, once. He'd nudged James's father with one elbow and muttered something about Lily resurrecting 'spew' before they all knew it. His dad had laughed hard at that, until Aunt Hermione shushed the pair of them, rolling her eyes in that very Aunt Hermione-ish way.

"What did you call her?" James asked.

"Huh?"

"Your owl."

"Oh." His father smiled, a real one that time. "Hedwig. She was a snowy owl."

"I've never heard you mention Hedwig before," James said, eyeing his father askance. "Whatever happened to her?"

His father's expression clouded over, and James suddenly wished he hadn't asked. He guessed the answer even before he spoke. "She was killed the summer I left the Dursleys. Death Eaters hit her with a curse that was meant for me."

The way he said it, the way the guilt warped his voice, made James's chest ache uncomfortably. He'd never been a particularly empathetic person, but his father's pain in that moment was as real to him as if it were his own.

"Is that why you won't have an owl?" James wondered, the thought suddenly occurring to him. "Because of Hedwig?"

His father twirled the feather between his fingers for a long moment before answering. "She was my first real friend. It just never seemed right to replace her."

James knew his father's biography inside and out. He'd been raised learning the stories of how, when his father was a little boy, he'd lived in the cupboard under the stairs in Privet Drive. He'd been bullied at school. Secretly, James had never really believed any of that. His dad was too strong, too smart and too powerful to ever have been intimidated by anyone.

James had always believed his father had been born a tough, war-hardened hero. But now, looking at his watery green eyes as he stared down at the feather that was a reminder of his childhood, James saw the truth. He could almost see the ghost of the boy Harry Potter had once been – a skinny little child with messy hair and broken glasses, a boy still mourning the death of his beloved pet, twenty-five years after the fact.

His dad had never been more human to him in that moment. James had always been afraid of what might happen if he ever took his dad down off the pedestal he held him on, but sitting at the kitchen table with him then, he realised that it wasn't a bad thing at all.

His dad was just a man, the same as any other, who had done some amazing things. He was somebody real, not just a legend to worship.

"Dad," James said, taking his free hand firmly in his own. His father raised his gaze, meeting James's eyes. He showed no surprise about seeing the uncharacteristic seriousness in his son's expression. "I love you."

This time, when Harry Potter smiled, it was the smile of the man who had fixed James's bleeding knees over the kitchen sink, and taught him how to fly, and gave him his invisibility cloak with a grin and a wink and a 'just in case'.

It was the smile of the man who kissed James's mother in order to shut her up when she started yelling, and coached Al in summoning a patronus, and let Lily singe his eyebrows off so that she could win their tournament of exploding snap.

"I love you too, son," his father said. "Always."

Only then did James realise the truth. Harry Potter had never been a mythical figure for him to idolize like the rest of his friends. He'd been nothing but Dad all along. And somehow, that was so much better.

* * *

_**I wanted James to be the quintessential kid who's dad was his absolute hero, but in this case, he was also the hero of the rest of the world, so there was added pressure. I liked the idea of him coming to realise that the reasons he worshipped his father were completely different to the reasons everyone else did. **_

_**Molly next!**_

_**PJ**_

_**x**_


	3. The Punch

_Molly_

The first time Molly punched someone, she was eleven years old. Her first punch was followed, in rapid succession, by her first detention, her first letter home, and her first visit to the Headmistress's office.

Molly had sat there, tight lipped, when McGonagall asked her why she'd done it. She'd refused to talk when her friends demanded to know. She'd stayed silent when her cousin Vicky stormed up to her in the Great Hall and demanded an answer for her embarrassing actions.

It was only three months later, on Christmas Eve, when she was sitting by the fire in her father's study, that she actually divulged the story to anyone.

Most surprisingly of all, the person she told was her little sister, Lucy.

Lucy and Molly were polar opposites. They always had been. Molly had what her dad so charmingly termed her 'grandmother's fire', but Lucy had always been a shy, sweet little thing prone to tears instead of fistfights.

Molly had never understood that about her sister, but she didn't judge her on it. She mostly just ignored her.

Despite this, when Lucy came into the study that evening while their parents were preparing dinner and tentatively cleared her throat, Molly turned.

"Why did you punch that Hufflepuff boy at school, Molls?" she asked, in her soft, nine-year-old voice.

Molly turned back to the fire at first, ignoring her sister as usual. But Lucy was persistent, in her own quiet way. She sat beside her, curled up at the foot of her chair like a dog. Big, blue-grey eyes blinked up at her, just waiting.

Finally, Molly caved in. Exhaling heavily, she said, "It was because of what they were saying."

"What were they saying?" Lucy whispered. She seemed to sense from her sister's tone that it wasn't something they should be discussing loudly.

Molly pulled a face. "He said some things about Dad."

"What kinds of things?"

"Just things, Luce, okay!" she snapped. Lucy's eyes widened with hurt, and Molly felt suddenly guilty. She reached down to pat her sister's head. Most people would have taken that as a patronising gesture, but Lucy didn't. She merely smiled.

Years later, when the girls would talk about that night, Molly would say that it was Lucy's calm that eventually broke down her defences. It wasn't strictly true. It was the unwavering love that she saw in her eyes that made her spill the beans.

"He said that Dad had been a traitor during the War."

"_Our_ dad?" Lucy looked astonished, as though such a thing couldn't ever be possible. Molly understood where she was coming from. She'd felt the same way.

"Yeah. And I told him he was talking crap, and he told me he wasn't, and that our dad wasn't worthy of a hero's name like Weasley. So I punched him."

Lucy had a lot of their mother's gentleness and goodness within her, so Molly had expected her sister to chide her. She'd expected her to say something like 'Just because he said something horrible doesn't mean you have an excuse to be violent'.

Instead, she just said in a measured voice. "Did you hurt him badly?"

"Yeah, he bled all over the place. Madam Pomfrey had to fix his nose."

"Good." Lucy's normally sanguine expression was filled with a savage sense of satisfaction, and Molly couldn't help but smile. Maybe, just maybe, she and her sister were a lot more alike than she'd ever given credit for.

Without another word, Lucy had picked herself up off the floor and trotted out of the study, leaving her sister alone with her thoughts.

Or, not entirely alone, it transpired. A few seconds later, she heard someone clear their throat.

Molly twisted in her chair, and found herself face-to-face with her father. He was watching her with an unreadable expression, his horn-rimmed glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose as he tilted his head down to better look her in the eye.

"How much of that did you hear?" Molly asked warily.

"Enough." She hated it when her dad used that neutral tone. It was always impossible to tell whether or not he was angry with her. "Why didn't you tell me any of that before, Molly?"

"Because I didn't want you to know that people were saying horrible things about you," she muttered. "I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

Her dad's lips twitched, like he might smile. But she knew that that couldn't be possible, because nobody in their right mind would smile when they'd just found out that people were saying nasty things about them behind their back.

"Molly Elizabeth Weasley," Her father said. "Do you know how much I love you?"

Molly blinked, thrown by the question. "Um… a lot?" she guessed.

He chuckled. "Yes, sweetheart. A lot. To the moon and back again, more times than you could count."

"So…" she searched her mind for words, but couldn't seem to find any that were suitable. Eventually, she settled on "does this mean you aren't angry with me?"

"For punching that boy? Yes, I was angry with you at the time, and I stand by that anger. What you did was wrong. But I'm touched that you'd stick up for your old dad that way."

"Of course I would!" Molly exploded. "What he was saying was a lie, Daddy!" She hadn't called him 'Daddy' since she was six years old. It was a stupid, babyish thing to call your father, and she'd tried telling Lucy that, but would she listen? No. And yet, it seemed to slip from her lips as naturally as breathing just then.

"No, Molls, it wasn't." His voice was gentle, but the words knocked the wind right out of her. Molly slumped back in her chair, her eyes bugging out of her head.

"What in Merlin's name are you talking about?" she demanded.

He sighed, running one hand through his short curls. They were a once-vivid red muted by grey. As a little girl, Molly had sat on his shoulders and laid her own long red curls across his head, trying to blend them together. She'd yell 'snap!' at the top of her voice. That always used to make her father laugh.

"When the war began, I was blinded by my own ambition. I refused to believe your uncle Harry when he said that Voldemort had returned. The ministry and Dumbledore drew a line between them in the sand, and asked people to pick sides. I picked wrongly, and I've been regretting that decision ever since."

"But…" Molly breathed. "But you fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, didn't you?"

"I did," he agreed. "I came to my senses before the end. I came back to my family. I told them how sorry I was. In time, they forgave me for turning away from them. But, for the rest of the wizarding world, the damage was done. I'd been branded a deserter."

"No." Molly shook her head vehemently. She might've only been eleven years old, but she knew the difference between deserting and taking a temporary absence. "You chose love over ambition, Daddy. You came back to them when it mattered. You are _not_ a traitor, and you are _not_ a deserter. And if anyone ever says that to me again, I'll tell them that."

In fact, Molly thought he was brave. If he'd realised he'd done something wrong and tried to fix it, if he'd walked into a battle knowing that the people he was fighting for were all angry at him, and might never speak to him again, but he'd still risked his life to fight by their sides… well, that gave the measure of a man far better than some bad choices in his youth, in her opinion.

After all, even Dumbledore had made some terrible choices when he was young.

"Then what am I, Molls? What will you tell them I am instead?"

His eyes burned with curiosity as he met her gaze, and Molly felt her heart swell with pride. Her dad had never babied her, but tonight, he'd confided in her. He'd treated her like a grown-up worthy of his respect.

"That's easy," she said. "I'll tell them you're my hero."

* * *

_**Molly, in my head, was always going to be a force to be reckoned with, simply because of her namesake. Percy as a father figure is one that's often been portrayed as dull and annoying, and I didn't want that for Molly. Part of her fierce love and respect for him comes from the fact that he doesn't treat her like a child. **_

_**Hope you liked it!**_

_**Teddy next.**_

_**PJ**_

_**x**_


	4. Expecting

_Teddy_

All through Teddy's adolescent years, people would tell him how much he looked like his father. 'Your father's face, but your mother's talent to change it, eh, boy?' they'd say.

Teddy hated them for it.

It wasn't that he resented the comparison. No, far from it. The comparison made him feel closer, linked in some tangible way to the man he'd never known. The man he was too young to remember.

That was where the hatred came from. The fact that these people, these strangers, could remember his father well enough to see his face in their minds, and he couldn't. They had known him, chatted with him, shook his hand, and Teddy hadn't. Nor would he ever be able to.

In his less charitable moments, Teddy hated his parents for dying. Why had his father risked his life when he, Teddy, had just been newly born? Why would his mother go after her husband instead of staying with her son? Was he that unimportant to them? Were they that focused on glory?

Then his better nature would kick in, and he'd remember. No, they left because it was the right thing to do. They were fighting a war, and they wanted to do it together. They died trying to make the world a better place for Teddy to live in. They'd paid the ultimate sacrifice so that he could be safe.

Teddy wished he had known his mother, but he almost felt like he did, because his Gran knew everything about her. She'd shown him photographs of her when she was small, and told him every story that she could remember.

His father, on the other hand, he barely knew at all. Harry had told him things, of course. The man was the closest thing to a father that Teddy had in the world, and he'd known his real dad well. But Harry hadn't known him from birth, hadn't raised him or lived with him, and he hadn't really been able to answer the little questions like 'what was his favourite song?' and 'did he like ice cream?'

Whenever there was a full moon, Teddy would look up at the sky and wonder what it had been like for his dad to go through that transformation every month, be ripped apart at the seams and made into a monster. He himself got a little testy around that part of the lunar cycle, as Vicky liked to remind him, but then that was no big deal, as she also often reminded him, because she was used to it. Her dad was exactly the same as Teddy, and as for her… well, there was a whole damn week of every month that Vicky was a monster!

Teddy sometimes wondered what his dad would've thought about Vicky. Would he have liked her? He hoped so. Even if he hadn't, would he have been happy to see Teddy happy? Would he have given him fatherly advice after their first big fight? Would he have helped him pick out an engagement ring?

Would he have given a toast at their wedding?

Those questions, and many more, were the ones that haunted Teddy in his quiet moments. He wondered how it was possible to grieve a person he didn't even remember having met, but it was. Grief was a heavy shroud draped over his shoulders that he carried every day. Sometimes, when he lay awake at night, the pain of his loss would threaten to rip him in two.

Then Vicky would slip under the covers and tuck her arm around his waist. She'd kiss his jaw and lay her head across his chest and whisper that she loved him, and it would plug the aching dam of sadness for another day.

It was a cold November night well into his twenty-sixth year that Teddy found himself standing at his parents' graves, telling them the best and most terrifying news of his life.

"Victoire's pregnant," he said softly. "We're going to have a baby. I'm going to be a dad."

The concept wasn't one that Teddy had quite wrapped his head around yet. It'd been a week since she'd run shrieking into their living room, holding that little bottle of blue potion aloft and waving it frantically.

Teddy had been confused at first. He'd looked at his wife like she was completely insane. "Merlin's beard, Vicky, why are you screaming like a banshee?"

"I-I'm… it's… we're…" she'd gibbered, and even her strawberry curls were quivering with excitement.

"We're what?"

"We're going to have a _baby_!" she burst out. "I'm pregnant! I'm _pregnant_, Ted, can you believe it?"

He couldn't. He'd looked at her beautiful, beaming face for a full minute and a half before it sank in enough for him to understand the words. Then, he'd scooped her up in his arms and spun her in a circle until they were both laughing and breathless.

Vicky had called her parents next, practically screaming the words down the phone to them. They'd apparated straight over, and Fleur immediately dissolved into tears of joy upon seeing her daughter, proclaiming in French to anyone who would listen that she was going to be a grandmother. Bill had stood there, watching his girls, with the biggest, proudest smile on his face. It had been such a pure, radiant expression of wonder that, for a moment, he hadn't even looked scarred.

Teddy wondered if his own father would've looked at him that way upon hearing the news.

It was to him that he addressed his next words, as he knelt on the ground beside the cool marble headstone. "I'm elated, but I'm also afraid. I don't know if I know how to be a father, dad. I don't know if I'll be any good. What happens if I screw our child's life up? What happens if the baby doesn't love me? Is being a father something that you're supposed to know how to do before you become one?"

"No," said a voice behind him. "We all pretty much make it up as we go along."

Teddy whirled around, eyes alight. His heart deflated slightly upon seeing the tall, black-and-grey haired man who stood behind him. For a second, he'd hoped…

Harry Potter stepped forwards, surveying Teddy with his bright green eyes that seemed to see right down into his soul. Harry's mouth twisted in sympathy, correctly assessing the reason for his slumped shoulders. He always had a way of knowing exactly what Teddy was thinking.

"Sorry, Ted, I didn't mean to disturb you. I just figured that I might find you here."

Teddy smiled. "It's okay. I could use some advice from someone who's actually going to answer."

Harry was silent for a moment as he stared at Remus Lupin's grave, lost in thought. "Your dad was a great man, Teddy. He was one of the cleverest, most together men I ever knew, but even he freaked out when he found out that your mum was going to have you."

Teddy's eyebrows shot up. "He did?" He'd never heard this story before.

"Yeah. We were neck deep in the hunt for Horcruxes, back then, and he showed up at Grimmauld Place, asking us if he could join our little trio."

Harry always played down the significance he, Hermione and Ron had had in winning the war. He cringed whenever anyone called them the 'Golden Trio' and instead, had laughingly come to term them the 'little trio'. He wasn't fooling anyone by being self-deprecating. He was the man who had saved the wizarding world, whether he liked the title or not.

"Why did he want to join you?" Teddy asked.

"He was afraid," Harry replied with a smile. "Terrified of tainting you with his being a werewolf, whether through genes or just association. He was worried that he'd condemned you, his own son, his innocent, unborn baby, to a life of shunning and painful transformations."

Teddy reeled at this. What a thing to have to consider as an expectant father! No wonder he'd run off. Teddy reckoned he would've, too. "And what did you tell him?"

Harry laughed sadly. "I was harsh. I told him not to abandon his child. I called him a coward."

"But he was just afraid," Teddy protested.

"He was, and I couldn't fully grasp his fear back then. I wasn't a parent myself. It wasn't until James came on the scene that I finally got it. But when Remus made me your godfather, he told me I'd been right when I'd called him a coward, and he thanked me for knocking some sense into him. He adored you, Teddy, from the moment he laid eyes on you."

"And then he died," Teddy said bitterly. Hearing those memories, the smile on Harry's face, it was just too much. Too much hurt. Too much loss.

"And then he died." Harry paused, scrutinizing his godson's expression for a long moment. "Parents don't leave their children unless they absolutely have to, Teddy. Mine died to protect me, and yours did the same. When your child is born, take one look into their eyes and tell me you wouldn't do it in a heartbeat, too."

Teddy left the cemetery that night with Harry's words still ringing in his ears. He hadn't realised how much he still carried resentment for his parents for abandoning him until his godfather had gently prodded it out of him. He crawled into bed with Vicky in the early hours of the morning, and spent the next twenty minutes just stroking her stomach, wondering whether or not he'd be like his father. Would he be willing to die in battle, leave his child forever, if it meant that their life would be safer and happier?

Six months later, when his daughter was born, and Teddy looked down into her huge, sapphire eyes for the first time, that was the moment when he finally forgave his parents for leaving him. Because he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he'd give up his life in an instant for the baby girl who dozed in his arms.

That's what it meant to be a father.

* * *

_**Teddy was a hard one for me to write, because he's never actually known his dad, and there was a lot of pain there. So I have in here the memory of a father, a surrogate father, and a soon-to-be father. Three different kinds of fatherly love. I also wanted to show a bit of Teddy's anger and grief about never having known his dad, but hopefully it comes across here that, even if he doesn't realise it, he always had a dad in Harry. **_

_**Thanks for reading. **_

_**PJ**_

_**x**_


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